Why do we keep getting these breathless articles about how secret geniuses used social media to "hack" elections? Do we really need a mass conspiracy to explain why large chunks of the population find populist/nationalistic leaders appealing? Motivating voters with this kind of rhetoric predates the internet, in fact it predates the United States.
As mentioned in the comments on the other hacker news post about facebook profiles being scraped by Cambridge Analytica:
1. Obama's 2008 election absolutely bragged about their use of social media to win. I vividly remember multiple long articles in the NYTimes talking about how they exploited new tech to reach voters.
2. During the 2016 election Clinton raised and spent nearly double trump. On top of that most of the money Trump got was towards the end of the election whereas Clinton had huge coffers from day one.
3. I read the guardian article linked and this is one of the few parts that seem to mention what exactly this "hacker" strategy was at Cambridge Analytica
“And then I came across a paper about how personality traits could be a precursor to political behaviour, and it suddenly made sense. Liberalism is correlated with high openness and low conscientiousness, and when you think of Lib Dems they’re absent-minded professors and hippies. They’re the early adopters… they’re highly open to new ideas. And it just clicked all of a sudden.”
This is the insight that that apparently is being called a "psychological warfare tool?" You're telling me that Clinton's campaign didn't have sociologists and psychologists who were absolutely obsessed with exactly the same advertising criteria? This kind of psychological profiling is the kind of stuff you learn about in 101 classes at university. For the past 80 years (that I as a lay person know of, probably longer) people have spent their entire careers analyzing and applying propaganda and marketing to political campaigns. Why should anyone believe based on what's being presented in this article that not only was none of this stuff done before but that it somehow handed Trump one of the greatest election upsets in American history? The mental gymnastics people are going through to deny the fact that yes, many voters have conservative values, is getting out of hand.
Sure, the Obama and Clinton campaigns used social media and astroturfing. And they developed and targeted their stuff based on psychological profiling. However, as I understand it, their stuff was targeted only in traditional ways. Based on lists from various sources. Some of those lists were based on website signups, and even posting history and so on. But they generally weren't very granular.
Basically, Cambridge Analytica took the behaviorally targeted ad approach that's taken over the Internet, and applied it to political campaigns. So they're doing psychological profiling at the individual level. They targeted likely Clinton and Sanders voters with messages that discouraged voting. They targeted likely Trump voters with messages that bolstered support and encouraged voting. Messages in ads. In Facebook and Twitter posts by agents and bots. Telephone calls. Physical visits by canvassers, who carried phones with apps that provided real time access to individual user profiles.
That was new tech!
But of course, now everyone will be using it. If they can afford it, anyway. And what does that portend for democracy? Nothing good, I'd argue.
LOL, we do know from Podesta emails, that Clinton campaign colluded with Google, Facebook, Twitter directly. Clinton got help from inside of these companies. Don't tell us your nonsense.
Your use of the word "collusion" and list of sites appears intended to imply that the Clinton campaign was as criminal, or more criminal, than the Trump campaign which itself is accused of "collusion" with Russia. You even use italics to emphasize how much worse the implied dirty connections must be between the Clintons and these companies.
What laws, specifically, do you believe the Clinton campaign broke with their "collusion" and in what way was the Clinton campaign's social media strategy intended to deceive?
And for bonus points, why does this only, specifically, implicate Clinton, the Democrats and the left in wrongdoing, but not Trump, the Republicans or the right?
To a large extent I agree with you. However, I remember that even with the Obama campaign I felt the same kind of unease that I feel now, a suspicion that we've maybe become a tad too effective at manipulating people, or rather large numbers of them through means that simply weren't available before the internet, marketing research, social media, and other 'modern day' things.
I suppose one could argue that this has been happening for a long time. I'm sure mass media and TV changed things, as did newspapers before that, etc. And while that does make the current 'narrative' a bit hysteric, I still think this general development through time is worth worrying about (and discussing).
I agree with your argument and have thought about that 'explainatism' as well. In my oppinion it is used by those that are incapable of accepting substantially different worldviews to their own. Trump was prepping up his followea for the loser narrative too with the 'the elections are rigged' argument. Attributing it to some sort of cheating narrative allows the follwers to continue belive that they are doing the right thing and that the other side is just a bunch of manipulated fools that need enlightenment.
1. Obama's 2008 election absolutely bragged about their use of social media to win. I vividly remember multiple long articles in the NYTimes talking about how they exploited new tech to reach voters.
Talking to people using their social media profiles, while identifying yourself as from a political campaign, is worlds away from what Cambridge Analytica are doing: which is not remotely open or honest.
One way the campaign sought to identify the ripest targets was through a series of what the Analyst Institute called “experiment-informed programs,” or EIPs, designed to measure how effective different types of messages were at moving public opinion.
Among the insights that were shared are the fact the people like conform to social norms, both in their community and their own past behavior. So telling voters that their neighbors have already voted or reminding them about their previous support of a candidate, makes those voters more likely to take action.
Comments
Why do we keep getting these breathless articles about how secret geniuses used social media to "hack" elections? Do we really need a mass conspiracy to explain why large chunks of the population find populist/nationalistic leaders appealing? Motivating voters with this kind of rhetoric predates the internet, in fact it predates the United States.
As mentioned in the comments on the other hacker news post about facebook profiles being scraped by Cambridge Analytica:
1. Obama's 2008 election absolutely bragged about their use of social media to win. I vividly remember multiple long articles in the NYTimes talking about how they exploited new tech to reach voters.
2. During the 2016 election Clinton raised and spent nearly double trump. On top of that most of the money Trump got was towards the end of the election whereas Clinton had huge coffers from day one.
3. I read the guardian article linked and this is one of the few parts that seem to mention what exactly this "hacker" strategy was at Cambridge Analytica
This is the insight that that apparently is being called a "psychological warfare tool?" You're telling me that Clinton's campaign didn't have sociologists and psychologists who were absolutely obsessed with exactly the same advertising criteria? This kind of psychological profiling is the kind of stuff you learn about in 101 classes at university. For the past 80 years (that I as a lay person know of, probably longer) people have spent their entire careers analyzing and applying propaganda and marketing to political campaigns. Why should anyone believe based on what's being presented in this article that not only was none of this stuff done before but that it somehow handed Trump one of the greatest election upsets in American history? The mental gymnastics people are going through to deny the fact that yes, many voters have conservative values, is getting out of hand.
Sure, the Obama and Clinton campaigns used social media and astroturfing. And they developed and targeted their stuff based on psychological profiling. However, as I understand it, their stuff was targeted only in traditional ways. Based on lists from various sources. Some of those lists were based on website signups, and even posting history and so on. But they generally weren't very granular.
Basically, Cambridge Analytica took the behaviorally targeted ad approach that's taken over the Internet, and applied it to political campaigns. So they're doing psychological profiling at the individual level. They targeted likely Clinton and Sanders voters with messages that discouraged voting. They targeted likely Trump voters with messages that bolstered support and encouraged voting. Messages in ads. In Facebook and Twitter posts by agents and bots. Telephone calls. Physical visits by canvassers, who carried phones with apps that provided real time access to individual user profiles.
That was new tech!
But of course, now everyone will be using it. If they can afford it, anyway. And what does that portend for democracy? Nothing good, I'd argue.
LOL, we do know from Podesta emails, that Clinton campaign colluded with Google, Facebook, Twitter directly. Clinton got help from inside of these companies. Don't tell us your nonsense.
Your use of the word "collusion" and list of sites appears intended to imply that the Clinton campaign was as criminal, or more criminal, than the Trump campaign which itself is accused of "collusion" with Russia. You even use italics to emphasize how much worse the implied dirty connections must be between the Clintons and these companies.
What laws, specifically, do you believe the Clinton campaign broke with their "collusion" and in what way was the Clinton campaign's social media strategy intended to deceive?
And for bonus points, why does this only, specifically, implicate Clinton, the Democrats and the left in wrongdoing, but not Trump, the Republicans or the right?
To a large extent I agree with you. However, I remember that even with the Obama campaign I felt the same kind of unease that I feel now, a suspicion that we've maybe become a tad too effective at manipulating people, or rather large numbers of them through means that simply weren't available before the internet, marketing research, social media, and other 'modern day' things.
I suppose one could argue that this has been happening for a long time. I'm sure mass media and TV changed things, as did newspapers before that, etc. And while that does make the current 'narrative' a bit hysteric, I still think this general development through time is worth worrying about (and discussing).
You don't need to. There is research that this type of targeting is absolutely ineffective.
Do please link to this research.
I agree with your argument and have thought about that 'explainatism' as well. In my oppinion it is used by those that are incapable of accepting substantially different worldviews to their own. Trump was prepping up his followea for the loser narrative too with the 'the elections are rigged' argument. Attributing it to some sort of cheating narrative allows the follwers to continue belive that they are doing the right thing and that the other side is just a bunch of manipulated fools that need enlightenment.
Talking to people using their social media profiles, while identifying yourself as from a political campaign, is worlds away from what Cambridge Analytica are doing: which is not remotely open or honest.
The Obama campaign's chief strategist is a master of "Astroturfing" and has a second firm that shapes public opinion for corporations
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2008-03-14/the-secre...
https://www.technologyreview.com/s/508836/how-obama-used-big...
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/meet-ps...
http://mprcenter.org/blog/2013/01/how-obama-won-the-social-m...